Shadows On The River

Scrabbles of snow hit my glass windows and slithered down like ghostly spiders. The cups in my kitchen cupboard rattled slightly against each other. I rose and stood beside the window and looked out. Snow swirled sideways underneath the streetlights.

“Please, God,” I found myself praying, “Watch over us.” I chided myself for praying. A long time ago I gave up on God. Yet, at times like this, I pray.

The news channel switched to another item and suddenly my attention jerked abruptly to the television screen. There I found myself looking into the face of the very person who had kept me looking over my shoulder all these years.

Larry Fremont.

Something like lead settled in my stomach. Larry Fremont is the reason I am no longer a Christian. Larry Fremont is the reason I gave up on prayer. I sat down at my table and watched the screen. Another gasp of wind made my house shudder.

One of the richest men in Halifax, Larry Fremont’s name has been linked to more than a few shady dealings down through the years. My fingers trembled. It’s not like I hadn’t seen his face in the newspapers or on posters, billboards or TV before. He’d run for mayor of Halifax a while back. He didn’t get elected—maybe the people were too smart. He was one of those rich entrepreneurs who manages always to be in the public eye. Just like his mother, I thought. Something deep inside me groaned and I felt a rising nausea.

I ran a hand through my hair and swallowed. Most of the time I can forget what Larry Fremont did to my family. Most of the time I can follow my father’s advice to put it behind me. Or my mother’s when she says, “Some things, Alicia, are best left buried.” Most of the time I can do that, not turn over the slime-covered rocks of the past. But tonight, with the winter storm battering my home and my thoughts, it all came back to me in crystal clarity. I aimed the remote at the screen and cranked up the volume, wondering if it would wake up Maddy. If it’s loud enough she can feel the vibrations through the floorboards.

Even though Larry and I lived in the same city now, we had never bumped into each other on the street, which was a blessing. Had I been crazy to move to the same city in which he lived? Sometimes I thought so.

One thing I had done was keep my married name. Maybe that gave me an edge of protection. Or maybe I was only fooling myself.

I kept my eye on the television. There had been a death. His personal accountant or lawyer, someone named Paul Ashton, had been found dead in his hotel room in Portland, Maine. It was believed that Ashton had a heart condition.

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” I said it out loud, shocking myself with that outburst.

Somehow I knew in my soul that Larry Fremont had killed that man. And I knew something else, too. If I would admit it to myself, my insomnia went farther back than to the birth of Maddy, or even learning that I would be raising a deaf child. No, this chronic, fearful insomnia, this locking of all my doors and windows, this habitual looking over my shoulder, the prayers I utter at odd times of the day even though I no longer believe in God, went back a full twenty-five years to when I watched Larry Fremont throw my best friend off a bridge. And then laugh about it.

He had killed once and had gotten away with it once. He has killed since. He would kill again. And I was terrified of him.

TWO

I woke with a groan the next morning with Maddy jumping on my bed and me and then pointing excitedly toward the window where it was still snowing, but more gently now. The fierce storm of the previous evening had spent itself out and all that was left were huge, lazy flakes wafting earthward. I had not gotten back to sleep until almost four. I had watched the news, hungry for more information about Larry Fremont and the death of his financial adviser, but there wasn’t a lot.

Ashton and Fremont were down in Maine discussing trade opportunities when Ashton retired to his room early, complaining of a stomachache. The maid discovered his body in the morning. He had not called down to the front desk or to his wife. That was all. I had clicked through several more news channels but found nothing.

I’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep then only to be awakened in what seemed like mere minutes when Maddy came in, signing that it was snowing, and that the snow was all the way up to the windows.

“I don’t think it’s that high,” I signed, and laughed. I signed and spoke at the same time. “Did you feel it? It was windy. The house shook.”

She signed excitedly, asking if we could go out and play in the snow.

“Later,” I signed. “We’ll have to shovel the snow, especially if we want to go out and get you those skates I’ve been promising you.”

My fears of last night were for now erased by the sunny dawn. All would be well. In a day or two my coffers would be overflowing with cold, hard cash and brand-new, name-brand skates would be no problem. And Larry Fremont? He was in the news all the time, anyway. How was this time any different?

“We can get new skates? Not old ones?” she signed.

“Yep, that’s the plan.” I pulled myself up out of my bed. Oh, yuck. Did I feel awful or what? I needed about four more hours of deep sleep.

“Are you ready for waffles?” I signed, and then yawned, fell back on my bed. “Maybe I should sleep first,” I said.

But Maddy would have none of that. She jumped on me, and we giggled and tickled for a while. Then I got up and put on my robe, and Maddy went and stood on tiptoes at my window. She ran her hand over the inside of the pane where snow was piled on the outside. I looked at her skinny, bare legs and her blond curls still tangled from sleep and thought to myself that she was the most beautiful little girl in all the world. I would give my life to not have the same thing happen to her as happened to me when I was a young girl, not too much older than she was now.

I tapped her shoulder and she turned to me. “You need your slippers,” I told her. “The floor is cold. Get your slippers and then we’ll make waffles.”

“Blueberry waffles?” she asked.

“Sure.” And then I signed something and she smiled and came into my outstretched arms.

We have a sign between ourselves which really means, “Come here for a hug, pumpkin pie,” which is my nickname for her because of her blond hair with its pumpkin-colored tints. She didn’t like the sign for strawberry blond. She was the one who came up with “pumpkin.” I added the “pie.” I held her fiercely and was surprised at the tears that swam in my eyes. I’m so very proud of her. When you have a deaf child, the learning curve is steep. First, there were multiple visits to specialists, only to discover that with the kind of deafness she had, a cochlear implant was a crapshoot. It might work. It probably wouldn’t. I learned that deaf children are often a year or so behind in their reading and literacy. I took a sign-language course for parents of deaf children and taught her signing from babyhood on.

I told her how much I loved her and how proud I was of her and how she was the best ice skater in the world and how as soon as the roads were cleared we’d go get new skates.

“Today?”

“I don’t know about today. It depends on how soon they come and plow the roads. And when we can get shoveled out.”

The two of us headed downstairs to make Saturday-morning waffles. Maddy went and stood in front of the picture window and gazed out at the snow. The morning sun peeked through the clouds. It was a white, wintry wasteland out there, a pale desert after a sandstorm. Sun on snow always brings a beauty, a whiteness to the inside of a house that isn’t there in other seasons. The snowplows hadn’t been by yet, so there was no delineation between the frontyard and road. One hearty soul was already out there attempting to clear his driveway with his snowblower, but it had gotten windy suddenly and from here it looked like the snow he was blowing was landing right back where it started.

Later when the wind died down, Maddy and I would bundle ourselves up and try to clean up the place with our shovels. The task looked daunting. Maybe my kind duplex neighbor Gus would snowblow my driveway when he cleared his own. He often did.

I pulled out the waffle iron from under my cupboard beside the stove and plugged it in to warm it up. I got out the eggs and flour and frozen blueberries and while I did so, I aimed the remote at the television to see if there was any news of the storm. Or of Larry Fremont. Especially Larry Fremont.

The news was the storm, of course, which had left an estimated twenty thousand Haligonians out of power. I felt fortunate that all we’d had were a couple of flickers. There was nothing about Larry Fremont, or the death of his associate.

Maddy, now clad in her favorite slippers and pink fleece housecoat, helped me measure flour into the mixing bowl, getting it all over her hands. She was signing happily about snow and skates and how much fun we’d have later, and could we make a snowman? And a snow fort? And could we have a snowball fight? And could her friend Miranda come over to play?

“Hey,” I signed, “Don’t talk so wildly, you’re getting flour all over the place.”

She giggled and wiped her fingers on her housecoat before she signed again. “Can Miranda come over?”

I nodded and signed that we could do all of those things, except, for perhaps, Miranda. “It will be hard to get anywhere today,” I signed.

Miranda is her school friend and deaf like Maddy.

The news flipped to a new item. I listened with one ear while I finished up the waffle batter.

Maddy said, “Look.” She said these words rather than signed them and I was really proud of her for talking. I followed her gaze to a man on cross-country skis who was walking a dog. It looked windswept and barren, like some scene out of Nanook of the North.

“Can we go skating like him?” she asked me.

I did a sort of made-up finger spelling sign for skiing, because this wasn’t a word I thought she knew. The two of us, like every deaf family, have a lot of made-up signs, “family signs,” they’re called.

“Can we go skiing, then?”

I laughed and said we had no skis. I poured the batter onto the waffle iron, filling every crevice. She kept her eyes on the snow while the waffle sizzled.

When it was done, I opened it up and took out the waffle, cut it in two and placed it on our plates. I poured on thick maple syrup, the real stuff, and we sat down and began to dig in. As we did so it struck me, as it sometimes does, that we didn’t offer any kind of table grace. The only time we ever do is when my parents come for a visit. I grew up in the church with grace at every meal and summer church camp and memorizing Bible verses and Sunday School. There are times when I wonder if Maddy might be missing out.

She was pouring on way too much syrup and I signed that that was enough. She turned away from me, pretending not to see. That’s what she does when she doesn’t want to talk to me, she’ll either turn her face away or close her eyes, scrunching them up and facing me defiantly. Although I love her to death, my little daughter can be stubborn at times.

I heard the name Fremont from the television and turned quickly away from Maddy and aimed the remote to turn up the volume. But it was the identical broadcast that I’d heard before. No new information. What was I expecting? And why did I care so much anyway?

After breakfast Maddy and I spent a lazy morning cleaning the house and doing laundry and making a batch of ginger molasses cookies. Later on she “chatted” with Miranda via her computer and then watched TV. Other mothers mind when their children spend too much time on the computer, but not me. It enhances Maddy’s reading. I tried to keep my eyes open while I sat at the table and worked a bit more on the boat design, but I was tired, very tired. What I wouldn’t give for a nap.

The snowplow eventually came by, leaving a tanker-load full of snow at the end of my driveway. By early afternoon, I began to hear the sound of snowblowers in the neighborhood. If you closed your eyes you could almost pretend it was summer and these were lawn mowers.

Midafternoon my neighbor began snowblowing my driveway. I waved to him from the picture window. Bless him. My neighbor Gus and his wife, Dolores, often make sure my driveway is plowed. I rarely even have to mow my own lawn in the summer. I know they feel sorry for me, a single mother with a deaf daughter.

I looked again. There were two men out there working on my driveway. Gus was behind the snowblower and someone else wielded a shovel at the end of it. I peered more closely. Mark? Could that possibly be Mark? I squinted. Yes! Farther down the street was his car. I put a hand to my face. Why on earth was he here shoveling my driveway? And how had he driven these roads in the first place?

I grabbed my coat and pulled on my boots and signed to Maddy to “Wait here. Watch from the window. I’ll be right back.”

I stomped through thigh-high snow to where Gus had cleaned a foot-wide swath to the end of my driveway. Mark looked up, saw me, grinned and put down the shovel and leaned on it rakishly. Mark has these studious, smart, good looks that can stop women in their tracks. With his neatly cut short, light hair, and his little rectangular glasses, he looks upscale; rich even, like he belongs in New York, not Halifax. No matter what he wears, clothes look so good on him. Like today. Even though he had pulled a ratty-looking, gray woolen toque down over his ears and that old man’s green down jacket.

I called to him. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need a plow out.”

“And you came all the way over here?” The moment I said it, I realized I had no clue where he lived. He could live on the next street for all I knew.

“Actually,” he said scooping another shovelful of snow. “I was up late. I got going on the interior design of the boat. I wanted to run some of these plans by you.”

“And so you come out on a day like today?” Without calling first? I wanted to add.

“Why not?” He grinned a crooked little grin and I felt myself melting under his gaze.

“How did you even know where I live?” I was still astounded that he was actually here.

“Your address is on a lot of stuff at the office. It was easy to look it up online.” He searched for my address? Stop it, I told myself, stop staring at him so intently.

I looked at the window and Maddy waved at me. I pointed. “My daughter. I have to go inside. But we’ll be back. She wants to come out into the snow.”

“She’s signaling to you rather vigorously.”

“She’s not signaling,” I said. “She’s signing. She’s deaf.”

“Oh.”

Inside, I helped my extremely eager and bright-eyed daughter into her snowsuit, wool hat and mittens. I did the same for myself, changing out of my grungy baking sweatshirt and into a nice sweater. Then I bundled up against the cold. The wind out there was still gusty.

Maddy rushed ahead of me out the door, arms spread wide. She immediately jumped into three feet of snow and giggled.

“That’s my daughter, Madison,” I told Mark. “As you can see, she hates winter.”

“Just like me,” he said while he pulled the gray cap more firmly down over his ears. “I was in Florida for three years. Some may call me crazy, but I really missed the winter. Had to come back home.”

I looked at him. “This is home?”

We were standing on the sidewalk where he had started to shovel, while in the driveway Gus was still making passes up and down through the deep snow.

“Yep. Nova Scotia born and bred.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Sydney.”

“Wow. I grew up not far from there.” When I told him where, a shadow seemed to pass across his face. Or was I just imagining it? My thoughts were interrupted, in any case, by Maddy.

“Look!” she shouted out loud.

“She’s full of spunk,” he said. “Must get that from her mother.”

“I don’t know about that. Today I feel totally out of it. I didn’t sleep well last night…Maddy!” I signed when she looked over at me. “Come meet my friend.”

She rose from where she’d buried herself and waddled over, completely covered in the fluffy white stuff. Mark bent down to her level and said very plainly, “Hello, Madison.”

“His name is Mark. He’s my friend from work,” I signed to her. She smiled and said in her best voice. “Hello.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Madison,” he said.

I interpreted and she signed, “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“Do you like the snow?” he asked.

Through my interpretation they carried on a conversation for a few more minutes and at the end of it I marveled at Mark’s persistence. My daughter made most of the men I dated nervous and ill at ease. And here was Mark, down at her level, making eye contact and asking her about school and her favorite things.

For the next hour the four of us cleaned the driveway and sidewalk. Even Maddy helped with her little shovel. After it was over I invited them all in, including Gus and Dolores, for hot chocolate and ginger molasses cookies.

When we’d all gotten inside and shed our sweaters, jackets, mitts and toques, I made a huge pot of hot chocolate in my grandmother’s stockpot. I made it the old-fashioned way, with real cocoa and milk, the way we did in the little town on Cape Breton Island where I grew up.

All we needed were Christmas carols and a fireplace to round out the afternoon, but because Christmas had passed a month ago, we had to satisfy ourselves with just hot chocolate and snow.

“You have a nice house,” Mark said looking around.

“Thank you,” I said. “I like it.”

Maddy and I live in a three-story town house. It sounds big because there are so many floors, but it’s a skinny little place. If you put it all out end-to-end, you wouldn’t end up with much square footage. The basement is basically a laundry room with enough space to store our bicycles and a few boxes. The main floor is kitchen, dining room and small living room. The third floor contains two bedrooms, Maddy’s and mine.

Dolores, who knows a few signs, talked with Maddy while Gus and Mark and I chitchatted about the boat-building industry. Gus, a retired captain, used to captain the ferry that ran between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island a long time ago, before the Confederation Bridge was constructed.

After we’d each had a couple more cups of hot chocolate and had pretty well finished the batch of cookies Maddy and I had baked that morning, Gus and Dolores took their leave. But Mark showed no signs of asking for his coat. Maybe he really had come over to talk about the boat plans. I showed him what I had been working on in the middle of the night, while Maddy settled herself in the living room and turned on the television.

It was a matter of minutes before I realized that Maddy was watching the all-news station, not her usual fare. It was Mark who noticed why.

“Looks like she had a busy day,” he said.

She had crawled up onto the couch and was fast asleep. I went and put a quilt on top of her. Before I was able to aim the remote at the TV to shut it off, the Fremont story was on. I stood, watching it for a few seconds.

Mark was standing in the doorway when he said, “I know that guy.”

I jerked my head up at him. “Larry Fremont? You know Larry Fremont?” I was shocked.

“Paul Ashton. The man who died. I know him.”

“Really?” I was incredulous.

He nodded, leaned his trim body against the doorjamb. “Our families know each other. The Ashtons go to the same church that I do.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, we know him.”

“No, I meant, seriously you go to church?”

“I do. You?”

I shook my head.

“I used to. Not anymore.”

“How are the Ashtons?” I asked.

“I just came from there. My parents have been with the family since this happened. Paul was a good man. Our entire church is feeling his loss.”

I kept my voice even. “So this must be quite shocking to everyone, his dying of a heart attack.”

Mark frowned, rubbed his chin. “That’s the funny thing about it. No one knew he had a heart condition, least of all his wife.”

We were standing and facing each other in the doorway. I said, “The news said he had an existing heart condition.”

Mark shook his head. “No one knows why the media came out with that, but then again, I suppose the media has been known to fabricate things from time to time.” He took off his skinny glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. The news had shifted back to the storm.

I aimed the remote and flicked the television off. Do I tell Mark that I know Larry Fremont? That we grew up in the same small town? I trembled a bit as I returned to the dining room where Mark was still leaning there and regarding me curiously.

“Are you okay, Ally?” There was concern on his face. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m okay,” I lied. “Just really tired.”

THREE

By Sunday, the magic of the snow had gone. It was now dirty and a nuisance and piled where it shouldn’t be, hindering the smooth flow of shopping and traffic. It was Sunday and we didn’t go to church. Funny that I thought about that fact on this morning. Sundays come and go in our house and I never consider church at all. I guess it was having Larry Fremont on the news. Or having Mark in my house the previous day. Or learning that Paul Ashton went to Mark’s church. Or even learning that Mark went to church in the first place.

I’d long ago spurned church when the one we attended had spurned my family. When all those long years ago they’d swept what had happened under the carpet, claiming I was the crazy one, that I had not seen what I knew I had. I never went back. The Fremont family were just too strong, too rich, too powerful. And our family wasn’t. We didn’t stay and fight. We left.

On this Sunday two things happened that changed everything for me. And by the time the day was over, I would realize that I should have listened to that uneasy voice the other night, the one that said nothing good will come your way, and that Larry Fremont is a murderer.

First, I was partially vindicated. The all-news station that I’d basically had on 24-7 since I first heard about Larry Fremont, came out with the truth. Paul Ashton had hit his head on the edge of the coffee table in the hotel room. They were looking into the possibility, still, that the fall may have been a result of a heart attack or brain aneurysm, but it was definitely a blow to the head that killed him. The hotel coffee table had been taken in for evidence. But I knew the truth. I was sure that Larry Fremont had hit him over the head with a blunt object and made it look as if he’d fallen into the coffee table. I would stake my life on this.

While I was watching it, the news cut away to Larry Fremont. I stopped and shushed Maddy, who was signing to me rapidly from where she was sitting on the couch. Larry Fremont saying how sad was this unfortunate accident and if the hotel was culpable in any way, they would get to the bottom of it. “Paul Ashton was a fine man,” Fremont was saying into the camera, “and I was proud to have him on my team, even if for such a short time, and to work with such an upstanding individual.” I’ll give Larry credit, he looked near tears.

The reporter added that foul play had not been ruled out. I sat and watched the whole thing without moving.

On the couch, Maddy was dressed and signing, “When are we going to get skates?”

“Soon,” I said. Fact was, I needed to get caught up with a few e-mails and do a bit of work first.

I went back to my computer and while I should’ve been working on the boat design, and particularly the rudder, which I was having trouble with, I was thinking about Larry Fremont and Paul Ashton. Money, of course. If Ashton was Fremont’s financial adviser, and a Christian at that, you can bet he found some discrepancies in the books. I knew I would be proved correct. It would just be a matter of time.